dumb question....

billiamwalker · Post by **billiamwalker** » Thu May 29, 2008 2:22 pm

i'm reading up on a bunch of different DAW's right now and was curious. What exactly is protools? Is it just the hardware used for digital recording or is it software too? I'm trying to make up my mind what kind of DAW to upgrade to and since i always hear about protools i was trying to look things up on it.. but i can't figure out if there's protools software as well.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Thu May 29, 2008 2:25 pm

Pro Tools is software.

Where exactly are you doing your reading?

Electricide · Post by **Electricide** » Thu May 29, 2008 2:25 pm

Pro Tools is software. It can only be used with protools hardware.

So the answer to the question is 'both' which is why people don't like it because they can't pick what interface to use.

billiamwalker · Post by **billiamwalker** » Thu May 29, 2008 2:32 pm

dwlb wrote:Pro Tools is software.

Where exactly are you doing your reading?

I'm just looking at the sweetwater website. i see tones of stuff for protools interfaces and crap but i couldn't find any legitimate software except a bunch of upgrades. that's why i was curious.

Nick Sevilla · Post by **Nick Sevilla** » Thu May 29, 2008 8:48 pm

billiamwalker wrote:i'm reading up on a bunch of different DAW's right now and was curious. What exactly is protools? Is it just the hardware used for digital recording or is it software too? I'm trying to make up my mind what kind of DAW to upgrade to and since i always hear about protools i was trying to look things up on it.. but i can't figure out if there's protools software as well.

www.digidesign.com

ProTools is both hardware and software.

In the HD (top of the line version) you can also choose what audio interfaces you can use as a front end for PT HD.

For PT LE and M-Powered, the choices are more limited.

Cheers

CurtZHP · Post by **CurtZHP** » Thu May 29, 2008 9:05 pm

billiamwalker wrote:
dwlb wrote:Pro Tools is software.

Where exactly are you doing your reading?
I'm just looking at the sweetwater website. i see tones of stuff for protools interfaces and crap but i couldn't find any legitimate software except a bunch of upgrades. that's why i was curious.

When you buy a ProTools interface (i.e. Digi003, MBox, etc.), the appropriate ProTools software comes with it.

ashcat_lt · Post by **ashcat_lt** » Thu May 29, 2008 9:09 pm

When ProTools first came around, it was software which would not work reliably on the available hardware platforms. A macintosh simply couldn't hold enough RAM, nor spare enough processor ticks to make this kind of multi-track audio software run in real time. So they created a line of what were essentially (IIRC) peripherals you could hang off your mac. They contained seperate processors and memory devoted solely to audio manipulation.

This is the exact reason why they were first out of the gate with a viable multi-track audio package. It also explains why they became and remained the industry standard for so long. It's only just the last few years that personal computers (even if they have an apple on them) have been able to produce comparable results without some peripheral help.

A little while back programs like Cakewalk Pro Audio, Cubase, Vision, and Logic began to actually work well. The folks at Digidesign, seeing they finally begin to lose market share, re-engineered their product into the LE version. This one does not require the expensive HD boxes to run, uses the onboard CPU and RAM. I thought originally that LE was to have been free and not at all hardware dependent, but I haven't really kept up on it.

One thing, though, about the HD system was that it worked as a very effective form of copy protection. I'm pretty sure that's why the M-Powered and other version of ProTools restrict the interfaces available.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Thu May 29, 2008 11:44 pm

ashcat_lt wrote:When ProTools first came around, it was software which would not work reliably on the available hardware platforms. A macintosh simply couldn't hold enough RAM, nor spare enough processor ticks to make this kind of multi-track audio software run in real time. So they created a line of what were essentially (IIRC) peripherals you could hang off your mac. They contained seperate processors and memory devoted solely to audio manipulation.

This is the exact reason why they were first out of the gate with a viable multi-track audio package. It also explains why they became and remained the industry standard for so long. It's only just the last few years that personal computers (even if they have an apple on them) have been able to produce comparable results without some peripheral help.

They weren't exactly first out of the gate; Sonic Solutions had a 24-track system out (using the same external-processing hardware setup you described) when ProTools was still a 4-track system. We're talking about maybe a year, but still. The 16-track Pro Tools III came out in 94; we had a 24-track Sonic system in 93. And Sonic had been doing 4-track systems for at least a year or two before that, having spun off from Lucasfilm in 1986.

ProTools did, however, market themselves better than Sonic, and their not-quite-as-picky approach to plug-ins helped put them over the top in the mid-90s market battle (did anyone ever get anything useful out of Sonic's compressors?). By the time ProTools was a household name, Sonic was pretty much just in mastering houses and their new DVD authoring system was starting to pop up here and there.

Someone will no doubt come by and correct my history, but that's how I remember it happening.

Electricide · Post by **Electricide** » Fri May 30, 2008 8:34 am

you forgot the part where Digidesign killed puppies and sold meth to 6th graders.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Fri May 30, 2008 8:46 am

I wasn't using Protools at that point, so I can't speak to it.

ashcat_lt · Post by **ashcat_lt** » Fri May 30, 2008 9:09 am

I was using Cakewalk (pre-ProAudio) for some little bit of audio in '94. It was klutzy and stupid, and didn't sync real well, but I got a couple little things out of it. I remember hearing about the puppies and meth, though...

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Fri May 30, 2008 9:28 am

Oh, man, Cakewalk in 94 was a mess. Barely had audio, IIRC. It was mainly a MIDI sequencer that they tried to put audio into.

ashcat_lt · Post by **ashcat_lt** » Fri May 30, 2008 1:28 pm

Yeah, it was a pretty damn good MIDI sequencer. It would allow you to place in audio events, but once the event triggered there was no real promise that it would stay in any kind of sync. The first version of Cakewalk Pro Audio was, IIRC v.4. It worked great considering the machine I had was a 66MHz with 8M RAM.

billiamwalker · Post by **billiamwalker** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 9:46 am

so another dumb question... does PT work on windows XP? i want to get a protools interface (http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DigiPre/) but always heard it only worked with mac. is this true?

ashcat_lt · Post by **ashcat_lt** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 9:51 am

Yeah, they got over that mac only thing a while ago, too.

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